138 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb.. 



self well, and more than well ; and any criticisms that we may have 

 to make must be looked upon rather as suggestions than as indicating 

 a carping spirit. 



One of the most striking restorations in the book is that of the 

 Horned Cretaceous Dinosaur forming the frontispiece, which we 

 are enabled to reproduce (Fig. i). Now, so far as regards the head and 

 body, there is little room for criticism, but the case is very different 

 when we come to the limbs. In the first place, we are led to ask 

 why the artist took for his model — as we are fain to suppose he did 

 — an Ungulate Mammal instead of a Crocodile in his restoration of 

 the hind-limbs. That is to say, we wish to know why the upper 

 segment of the hind-limb (femur) is included in the common integu- 

 ment of the body, instead of being, as in 'the Crocodile, free. We 

 should, indeed, have thought it much safer to follow the 

 crocodilian model in this respect. Then, again, we have greatest 

 doubts as to whether the creature ever had the prominent Ungulate- 

 like heel with which it is represented, as, on turning to the figure 

 of its skeleton on page 166, we find there is no backward projection 

 of the calcaneum, so that here also the departure from the crocodilian 

 model seems unjustifiable. In the fore-limb it is, further, quite evident 

 that the joint which appears intended to represent the wrist is placed 

 much too high up; and we also doubt if any reptile could possibly 

 have had the "action" in the fore-limb which the forward bend of 

 this joint on the right side is clearly intended to represent. In all 

 these points the want of an anatomical knowledge on the part of the 

 author wherewith to check the exuberant fancy of his artist is only 

 too apparent ; and the former would certainly have been well advised 

 had he submitted the sketches to some person well versed in the 

 osteology of reptiles before having them photographed. 



We may remark here that the author calls the reptile in question 

 by the name Triceratops, but he should have been aware that this is 

 certainly not its proper title ; and we notice all through the book a 

 lamentable want of care in this respect, the names assigned by one 

 particular palaeontologist to the animals figured being taken without the 

 least enquiry as to whether they are correct. We should have thought, 

 moreover, that in a popular work the insertion of specific names in the 

 case of these giant reptiles was perfectly unnecessary, and only too 

 likely to make it repellent to the unscientific public. Then, again, 

 the number of generic terms introduced into the text is, to our fancy, 

 far too numerous — more especially when many of them are probably 

 synonyms. For instance, it would ha\e been far better to allude to 

 the skull figured on page 79 as that of a Carnivorous Dinosaur, 

 rather than as Ccvatosanrus, seeing that both Professors Cope and 

 Baur are confident that it belongs to Megdlosaurus. The author is 

 also, in some cases, somewhat careless as to sources from which he 

 derives his figures, and we may remind him that the skeleton figured 

 on page 75 is not after Marsh. 



